Socrates

Pastels ($POA)

60 cm H x 48 cm W

Barn owls live alone or in pairs and are excellent hunters, catching their prey in complete darkness, using super-sensitive hearing, and silent flight.
Being nocturnal, they roost quietly by day in unseen places like tree hollows, thickly foliaged trees, caves and rock crevices, buildings and even wells. As Australia is one of the world’s worst offenders when it comes to land clearing, with a projected 3 million hectares of untouched forest to be lost by 2030, one of the biggest threats to Australian owls is loss of habitat. Our owls rely on hollow-bearing trees, often hundreds of years old, for breeding.
As owls are natural predators of rodents, Rat Poison is fast becoming the biggest killers of owls, due to secondary killings. Owls also fall victim to vehicle strikes as they disperse in search of food when local prey populations begin to thin out, or drought conditions affect inland Australia.